Sabre flying out of Wichita, Kansas and a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker are launched to escort the bomber, and due to high winds at Wichita the decision is made to land at Blytheville AFB, Blytheville, Arkansas. After six hours of careful preparation, including the launch of another B-52 to test various landing configuration options, the damaged Stratofortress is successfully landed. It was repaired and returned to service until retired from operations with the 2d Bomb Wing in 2008 and subsequently scrapped, Barksdale Air Force Base. 13 January A U.S. Air Force Boeing B-52D Stratofortress, 55-060, "Buzz One Four", of the 484th Bomb Wing, Turner AFB, Georgia, suffers structural failure in turbulence of winter storm as blizzard socks the East Coast, crashes approximately 17 miles SW of Cumberland, Maryland. The bomber comes down in a small valley on Elbow Mountain in a state park. Pilot, co-pilot, eject, survive. Navigator, tail gunner, eject, die of exposure. Radar nav fails to eject, rides airframe in with two nuclear weapons on board. The pilot, Maj. Thomas W. McCormick, 42, of Hawkey, West Virginia, telephoned the Air Force in Washington, D.C. from a farmhouse near Grantsville, Maryland, saying that he was apparently the last of his crew to bail out, having heard the other seats leave the aircraft before he ejected. The US Army sends a 15-man team of bomb disposal experts from Fort Meade, Maryland, and the USAF dispatches a 35-man rescue team from Andrews AFB, Maryland. Both bombs survive intact and are recovered. The Stratofortress was also carrying two AGM-28 Hound Dog air-to-ground missiles. The aircraft was returning from a 24 Hour Airborne Alert mission (referred to a "Chrome Dome" mission) diverted to Westover AFB in Massachusetts for repair of inflight maintenance issues, spending the night at Westover before returning to Turner AFB. 22 January A U.S. Air Force Lockheed F-104B Starfighter, 57‑1306, of the 319th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Air Defense Command, Homestead Air Force Base, Florida, crashes at ~1330 hrs. on Santa Rosa Island, ~one mile E of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, shortly after departure from Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, to return to Homestead. The pilot, Capt. Lucius O. Evans, ejects safely just before the fighter impacts in sand dunes just short of the Coronado Motor Hotel, parachuting into the Choctawhatchee Bay. He is then transported to the Eglin base hospital by Assistant Police Chief Jack McSwain, where he is reported to